Reporter's notebook: Megan Thee Stallion sued | Young Thug's RICO trial drags on
The legal beat is raging right now, but all anyone wants to talk about in my social media replies is a nothing superior court lawsuit against a celebrity. Go figure.
Donald Trump is on trial in New York, and that’s not the only big news on the legal beat. We’ve also got heavy action at the U.S. Supreme Court, and a New York appellate panel on Thursday overturned Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein’s sexual assault convictions.
So of course, my social media @s have been blowing up with hysterical comments about a new lawsuit filed against rapper and Los Angeles County crime victim Megan Thee Stallion.
I learned through my Twitter mentions that a former employee of Megan’s filed a civil complaint against her in Los Angeles County Superior Court in what would be a simple and very boring wage-and-hour lawsuit were it not for a couple lines about what he says happened in Ibiza, Spain, two years ago.
Emilio Garcia is represented by Ronald Zambrano of West Coast Employment Lawyers, who also represents Lizzo’s former dancers in a sexual harassment lawsuit that’s garnered so much press attention it could be a case study in public relations classes and maybe a discussion topic in a conference about the increasingly fuzzy line between lawyering and flacking.
As I explained in a YouTube live in which I mispronounced faux, the new lawsuit against Megan is not a sexual harassment lawsuit. It’s an employment lawsuit that alleges Megan and her management company, Roc Nation, improperly classified Garcia as an independent contractor and thus owe him for unpaid overtime, meal and rest breaks. The complaint is 42 pages, but most pages are repetitive.
The most salacious claim is the hostile work environment harassment claim, but the complaint is weak on details. The only specifics are about Megan allegedly insulting Garcia’s appearance and Garcia being in a car when Megan and a friend “suddenly” “start having sex right beside him.”
Surprisingly, after a mountain of salacious details in the Lizzo lawsuit, Garcia’s lawsuit offers no specifics. As someone in my Twitter replies asked, “What is the threshold for sex in this case?”
You don’t need a law degree to read the complaint and conclude this isn’t the strongest lawsuit, but that hasn’t stopped bad actors from turning my Twitter replies into a war zone of toxicity.
For the people who have been harassing Megan since rapper Daystar “Tory Lanez” Peterson shot her almost four years ago, the lawsuit is a huge cause for faux righteous indignation. They are of course 100 percent focused on the lines about Ibiza, and they’re spreading a lot of misinformation while they do it.
Garcia, meanwhile, told NBC News he’s seeking “millions” in compensation, but what’s more likely to happen is his lawsuit will meet the same fate so many other celebrity, publicity-driven lawsuits do: It’ll fall apart in litigation and maybe get bogged down in split decisions and appeals like what’s happening now with the Lizzo lawsuit, and the public will never hear much about it.
All the hysteria in my Twitter replies was enough to make me click out of it and try not to open it back up the last couple days. Imagine a world where all I do is write about trash state court lawsuits against celebrities and I say it’s legal affairs journalism. I’d rather put all my stuff in storage and car camp at national parks all summer.
One positive result of all the hooplah is I sold some merch off it. I quote tweeted a couple haters and plugged my Shopify store, and I sold 12 Googly Eyed B!tch mugs, one Meghann Thee Reporter mug and one GEB sweatshirt in 24 hours. You can order yours here.
Also, the haters I quoted either deleted their tweet or their accounts entirely. My favorite is the one in which someone @’d me that they were outside, but now the account no longer exists. The Internet can take care of itself if you do it right.
The Young Thug trial may never end
Meanwhile, in Atlanta, the racketeering conspiracy trial of Jeffery “Young Thug” Williams continues to be a daily spiral.
The latest dust up occurred Wednesday when Williams’ lawyer Keith Adams said Fulton County Chief Deputy District Attorney Adriane Love lied to Judge Ural Glanville to try to get him to reconsider a decision not to allow as evidence a 15-second video of Williams talking about consequences for “snitches.”
As you can see in the above video, Glanville didn’t do much about it.
The argument was probably the highlight from the week, which was marred by the usual incessant sidebars and the prosecutors’ strange inability to smoothly move through exhibits when questioning witnesses.
The current witness is Lakea Gaither, a retired gang investigator with the Atlanta Police Department who interviewed Williams’ longtime friend Walter “DK” Murphy in 2015 and 2016.
She’s testifying as both a fact witness, an expert opinion witness and a lay opinion witness, and much of her testimony has been about her discussions with DK about Young Slime Life being a gang, and crimes he said related to YSL such as the 2015 shooting of Lil Wayne’s tour bus as it left the Compound nightclub in Atlanta and the 2015 shooting of Dexter Montgomery by YSL associate Demise “Nard” McMullen.
I’ve said before that the case is far too big. Prosecutors are treating the overt acts like individual crimes that need to be proven instead of proving the crimes are part of a criminal conspiracy to advance the interests of YSL as a gang.
Nothing has changed. The latest batch of overt acts relates to Montgomery’s shooting, which was adjudicated as an attempted murder not long after it happened but reemerged six years later as an overt act supporting the racketeering conspiracy charge against Williams and his five co-defendants, Rodalius Ryan, Deamonte “Yak Gotti” Kendrick, Marquavius Huey, Shannon Stillwell and Quamarvious Nichols.
This is the same shooting I wrote about last week in which Deangelo “I’m ready to go back to prison” White was essentially dragged kicking and screaming to the witness stand to testify as an alleged attempted murder victim.
Montgomery also testified. He was not shown on camera, but a picture from shortly after the shooting was entered as evidence, and it shows a chunk of his head missing.
Murphy also testified about seeing Montgomery in court. “It was traumatizing,” he said. The shooting has no direct connection to Williams, but prosecutors allege Murphy and McMullen went to the gas station armed with assault rifles or “choppers” as part of their gang activity for YSL.
The trial is to continue on Monday, and I’ll be streaming on YouTube.
I also recently surpassed 100,000 TikTok followers and am currently sitting at almost 103,400, so you should join me on there if you haven’t already. (Don’t let the so-called “TikTok ban” get you down. Nothing has been banned yet. TikTok owner ByteDance has a year to sell before anything happens.)
Meanwhile…
Disgraced and imprisoned Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein is getting new trial in his New York sex crimes case.
Here’s a link to the ruling, which includes two dissents.
I discussed Weinstein last night on LiveNow from Fox with host Andrew Craft and Associated Press writer Michael Sisak.
Coming up…
I’ve got a few things on my plate next week, including a discussion at UC Irvine on Monday that you can watch online.
Then on Tuesday, neo-Nazi Robert Rundo is up for a bail hearing with U.S. District Judge Cormac Carney on Tuesday. (You can read his bail motion here and the prosecutors’ opposition here.)
Thursday I’ll be in Los Angeles for the sentencing of Conception boat captain Jerry Boylan for his manslaughter convictions over the 2019 fire off the coast of Santa Barbara that killed 34 people. (Read the defense’s opposition to the pre-sentence report here and prosecutors’ memo here.)
I’m also hoping to make Friday’s hearing on the motion for mistrial in ex-Los Angeles Deputy Mayor and newly minted 12-time felon Raymond Chan’s public corruption case. (Read the defense motion here, the prosecution’s opposition here and the defense reply here.)
Meanwhile, you can support my work by purchasing a subscription to this mailing list (please!) and/or buying some GEB and/or MTR swag. The GEB mugs are the best sellers and the sweatshirt are quite cozy.
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